November 06, 2003 | View Comments (13) | Category: Web Business
Summary: A funny read in regards to some real-life client quotes.
If you have some time just sit back and enjoy the bliss of "Best Clients Quotes". Really you must read this because some of these are just too good to pass up.
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"Never use blue, I hate blue because I hate people with blue rugs."
"The fact that this logo is creative and interesting is exactly what is wrong with it."
"less creativity, bigger pictures"
"We want a website that can play DVD quality video, but we don't want to use streaming video and the load time must be zero."
Amazing.
Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)
Client: "Can you make the background constantly change colors? I want people to know that we are fun and exciting."
Me: "People will think you are trying to give them a siezure."
Client: "Look, just try it, and if we don't like it, we can change it later."
Me: "Well, this will really, really make it hard to design the rest of the site if the background color is constantly changing."
Client: "Then make the rest of it change, too."
Me: ".........uhh, are you sure that's what you want?"
Client: "Yes"
Client: "This looks like crap. Why did you make it like this?"
Me: "You asked me too."
Client: "If you knew it was going to look like this, why did you even bother?"
Me: "Because I charge you by the hour."
Let's just say that now he's a lot more picky about what random ideas he makes me carry out.
JC (http://www.thelionsweb.com/weblog)
whoops. forgot the "this one's my favorite"
And I already gave you my personal favorite from my own experience...
Builder: "How much to redesign my website?"
Me: "How much to build me a house?"
Builder: "Well, that depends..."
Me: --nodding--
Builder: "Ah, gotcha."
And here's another... Same builder, on the prototype for another website for the apartment complex he owns (and I live in):
builder: "it needs more"
me: "more what?"
builder: "more... oomph"
me: "oomph."
builder: "I don't really know. You're the designer."
I added a nifty shadow to the lamp post on the lefthand side of the page. turned out OK. Still needs 'more' he says, but we launched without it.
One designer suggested it might be because the site is kinda monochromatic since everything is in shades of red or tan except for the lamp post.
JC (http://www.thelionsweb.com/weblog)
Lordy. I just got a new one.
OK. Legal requirement, all banks must display a form with information on major stockholder purchases (eg board members, senior executives) on the website within 72 hours of the purchase.
Took effect.. eh, a few months ago. I built an application that would take the HTML file the legal division's software outputs and format it so it fit our website.
Phone call today:
legal: hi, yeah, we upgraded that software and it doesn't work the same anymore, we can only output in XML or PDF
JC: O...k....?
Legal: So we need the website changed so it works right
JC: OK... when do you need this done by?
Legal: Oh, there's no rush
JC: Good, because we're kinda busy here.
Legal: Oh, that's ok. As long as it's done by tomorrow morning.
arrrggghhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!
JC: Tomorrow?! Whoa.. I meant...when do you need it measured in weeks or months. When did you get this software?
Legal: --starts lengthy explanation of why they should have had it a month ago but it was sent to wrong department--
JC: nevermind... do you have actual data that needs to go up now or is this just in preparation for when you do (we only have updates on this maybe once every month or two)
Legal: yes, it has to be up there by tomorrow evening
JC screams
I'm having them send over the HTML that it DOES output... apparently it split from one page into 3... I can meld those back together so it'll work in the application I wrote originally and look at a way to convert the XML version or do links for the PDF version. Voting on #2 since it'll be easier though less user-friendly.
JC (http://www.thelionsweb.com/weblog)
And here I remember why I bloody hate CSS positioning.
You can't combine 3 documents that all use it like you could if they were just tables.
Of course that only applies to fixed positioning, but that's what I'm dealing with here
JC (http://www.thelionsweb.com/weblog)
Haha, I have have no envy for you right now. Sometimes I wish websites were like art in the sense that I design something and someone just comes and places a bid on it and buys it. Like an art piece at the museum.
Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)
well, some of this stuff is right up there with the school of modern art that considers feces slathered over a banana on top of a mesh bag containing cancelled elvis stamps to be a masterwork.
swearing again... sent me xml files but not the accompanying XSL files. Sent also the "html 3.2" which I hoped would be better but is abysmally formatted.
Can we please hang the person who wrote the exportation stuff for crystal reports?
JC (http://www.thelionsweb.com/weblog)
It seems some clients like to forget why THEY hired YOU. Wonder if 37signals and other big names have these problems. JC, you are unfortunately stuck in the world of stupid people. I have had my experiences working in corporate IT depts doing helpdesk stuff. Oh the stories I have from those years...
Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)
Reading the quotes on that page was the most fun I had all day. Personal fav:
===============
Client: "We want a website that can play DVD quality video, but we don't want to use streaming video and the load time must be zero."
Designer: "That's impossible. Everything has a load time. DVD quality runs about 100 megs a minute."
Client: "We'll take our business elsewhere..."
===============
What do you say to that?
Louis (http://www.clotman.com)
On a recent website:
Company I'm freelancing for: "The website must look the same in NN4 and use 8.4 letter filenames"
Me: "Can I see the server logs to check the number of viewers with NN4?"
CIFF: "Oh I don't think we can ask the client for that, but the department all uses NN4"
...
I visit the department to find they upgraded to IE6 about at least a year ago :/
How about this answer?
Client: "We want a website that can play DVD quality video, but we don't want to use streaming video and the load time must be zero."
-> "We can do that! It's called a "DVD". I'll make a form for website viewers to enter their name and address. Then you can post the "DVD" disks to the website viewers, and (assuming they have a DVD drive) they can then watch DVD quality video on their computer. Of course there might be a few usability issues..."
;-)
My fave is from JC:
Client: "If you knew it was going to look like this, why did you even bother?"
Me: "Because I charge you by the hour."
damn ;-) Amazing how everyone who hires a designer thinks they know more about design than you do huh.
peace - oli
PS what browser requires 8.4 filenames? I can only guess something that worked on DOS or maybe Win 3 - were there browsers back in those days? ;-)
oli (http://oli.boblet.net/)
"My fave is from JC"
I wish that was mine. I was quoting from the site Paul linked to.
Hell, I just wish I could charge by the hour. People get very iffy about that, though, so I usually just do a fixed bid up front and define the scope of the project as well as I can and note in the contract that anything beyond that scope will incur additional fees.
and 8.4 filenames? I've never heard of those... y'think they meant 8.3 and just didn't really know what he was talking about? Probably going off of some IT policy written in 1993... I know we have a few of those around the bank (the IT automation policy glossary is full of acronyms that haven't been used since the 70s)
Maybe it was going to be on an old novell server or something and name length was an issue? It wouldn't be a browser issue, it'd be a server one.
JC (http://thelionsweb.com/weblog)
Actually I'm quite shocked how many of these no seem much more like reasonable requests
eg
>>"can you fix the colors up here?"
me:"sure. what'd you have in mind?"
client:"well, i'm not sure. i'm pretty color-blind and it just doesn't look right to me. what can you do with it?"
me:"..."
client:"what color is it, exactly?"
me:"............"<<
Colour-blindness is something we have to look out for now, as in making sure that color isn't ever the only indicator of links etc...
there are more examples too that when I first read this a couple of years ago seemed totally unreasonable but now are beginning to seem everyday!
scottbp (http://www.positionrelative.com)
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#1
Hmm. Some of them seem pretty reasonable, like "Make our website work without Javascript" (sensible enough) and "What's HTML" (clients don't need to know the techie stuff).
Jim Dabell (http://www.jimdabell.com/)